Making Kefir From Kefir Grains – Water (part1)

Kevin’s Been Making Kefir From Kefir Grains And He’s Inspired Me To Too

Kevin making kefir from kefir grains, including some delicious flavoured kefir (I have to guess - they *look* delicious!)

My friend, Kevin from the Outlaw Psychic, has been filling my Facebook newsfeed up for weeks with tempting photos of his homemade healthy soda. He’s been making kefir from kefir grains and then turning the results into a whole range of more and more delicious sounding concoctions.

Even though he’s been showing off his photos for a while now and I thought it was interesting and even delicious sounding, I didn’t have any plans to make my own. There’s a commitment y’know – they’re alive and they need feeding and looking after, a bit like sourdough (something else I like the sound of but haven’t tried yet either .. more commitment issues maybe). I’ve been explaining patiently to my children why they can’t have a pet and the thought of taking on the responsibility of one, even one with delicious culinary side effects, wasn’t appealing.

Delicious .. Plus Healthy

Then, for some reason, this week I read a note on one of his threads about how it cleared up his eczema and it totally hooked me. I can’t say why exactly, because I don’t even have eczema, but the idea of making kefir from kefir grains and having a hopefully endless supply of delicious, fizzy drinks through the summer .. with health benefits .. suddenly became compelling enough to look into. My system does feel completely out of balance, so maybe it was one of those kinds of nudges I get that make more sense in hindsight!

The Tutorials

I started off with this video of raw chef Zoe that shows her making kefir from kefir grains step-by-step, that made it seem pretty easy. She did that whole strong warning about metal utensils thing with so much energy that it made me wonder, “is that really true?”. Anyway, it didn’t resonate for me, so I googled a bit more and found this article by Dom that made more sense. Other than that, I loved Zoe’s process the most of those I found online and it’s the process and measurements I’m going to start with.

Hmmm .. Not Exactly What I Expected

I looked at a few shops online and then went with someone selling their extra grains on ebay. I ordered them and they despatched them yesterday and they arrived today, so not too long in transit. They look much smaller and more yellow than the ones in Zoe’s video and I wasn’t expecting the weird, sour/sickly smell, but as they’re fermenting, I’ll put it down to that because I don’t have anything to compare it to.

My First Try

This is what the grains look like today:

I added 1 litre of spring water to a clean kilner jar, added 2.33 Tbsp of ‘unrefined’ cane sugar and 1.33 Tbsp of Rapadura sugar and stirred before adding all of the grains that I bought (a bit more than 3 Tbsp). After a gentle stir, I added 3 unsulphured apricots and a couple of pieces of unwaxed lemon like Zoe did in the video.

I’ve just sealed the jar with a piece of greaseproof paper and an elastic band and added the date to the glass with a whiteboard marker. Not much of an issue now, but I know how forgetful I’ll get once the novelty wears off and it’ll be useful to be in the habit of dating the jars so that I don’t end up leaving them for too long and ruining a batch.

All there is to do now is to wait for around 36 hours before I start tasting to see when I want to stop the first fermentation and then I’ll use that to make a flavoured kefir. Yum!

Have You Tried It – Tell Me About It In The Comments!

Hopefully, I’ll be back in a couple of days with another post letting you know how it worked out. There are loads of articles online talking about the health benefits of making kefir with kefir grains, but I reckon overall, I’m hoping to get my gut into optimal health to see if it helps clear my head which seems awfully fuzzy lately. If you’ve made water kefir, please let me know in the comments below how it worked out for you: any health benefits? your favourite flavours?? I’d love to know.

Kevin’s Been Making Kefir From Kefir Grains And He’s Inspired Me To Too

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Comments

I started with milk kefir made with raw sugar. my ‘system’ needed some whelp digesting food since i lost my gallbladder. Anyways I made milk kefir for about two weeks and decided that i could not consume the stuff as fast as I could produce it. my family refused it partly because of the smell. Which was somewhere between a strong yeast smell and fermented rotten milk. Any ways I like sour milk and it by the time was delicious in my morning smoothie.. I had heard about changing the grains over to water kefir so I tried. Bingo! they grains are doing great, they love the organic agave and raw sugar and are producing nicely. The families favorite drink (yes the kids too) after the initial fermentation using spring water and the agave is where I add some organic grape and pomegranate juice. 48hours in the dark room and they are an effervescent drink. I add about 1 cup of each to fill a wine bottle. I hope you enjoy your journey! this has been an amazing and educational time for me and the family.. Now we are slowly making the journey into the life of raw… going to try for 60-75%.

That sounds so great – especially the juice second fermentation. I’ve had to stop making it for now because it seemed like I was having a reaction to the drink, either an intolerance, or a candidiasis response. My children loved it though.

We’ve been mostly raw because we all want to eat different things and also to snack and graze all day instead of eat full meals, so mixed snack plates of raw fruit, veg and nuts work best for us. As the cooler weather’s rolled in though, we’ve mostly reverted to cooked foods, so we’ll see how that feels for us. I like not ascribing to any one way of eating and mostly eating for what feels right at the time. I do have quite a craving for green smoothies right now, which I think is related to a few days of dining out for all of our meals with friends. I can’t wait to be flooding my system with spirulina and chlorella!